Some time ago we reported that the Government were committed to funding restoration and protection works to a number
of sites of special national and historical significance and these comprised 150 locations. The Prime Minister has
now signed an order to allocate funds to the first nine of such sites, which marks the beginning of this major
project. The starter sites include an historic railway station near the Sea of Galilee, the Shai Agnon
House in Jerusalem, the battlefield at Yad Mordechai in the Negev (where the Egyptians were halted in 1948) and the
first agricultural school in Israel. The total costs involved at this stage are over 30 million shekels ( 5.5
million pounds sterling). The lucky sites are all fairly modern ones which, curiously, are less well protected than
many ancient ones, and it is hoped that the turn of the archaeological areas will come soon.

Tel Shikmona, Best Example of the Four Room House

As mentioned previously, the ancient site of Shikmona, at the foot of the Carmel range to the west of Haifa, which
was partly excavated forty years ago, is undergoing re-excavation by the University of Haifa, under the direction of
Drs. Shay Bar and Michael Eisenberg. They reported that an outline of a four-room house, the type-cast Israelite
dwelling, had been seen on photographs of the long neglected and dirt-covered site, which spanned from the Late
Bronze Age to the Islamic period. Present rehab work on the site shows it to have started as a fairly modest village
that grew into a prosperous centre trading with nearby Cyprus and Lebanon for luxury goods, such as elite pottery
and vessels to transport the purple dye of the shells of the Phoenician coast. The ground floor of the four-room
house is in near-perfect condition, it is dated to the early Iron Age, and will be preserved and incorporated into a
national park planned for the site.

Second Temple Stolen Ossuary Declared Authentic

Three years ago the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recovered an inscribed ossuary that had been stolen from an
unknown tomb. The inscription read Miriam, bat Yeshua ben Caiaphus, Cohanei Maaziah miBeth-Imri
in Aramaic. The importance of the inscription suggested a possible forgery but it was recently authenticated by Dr.
Boaz Zissu of Bar-Ilan and Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv Universities. They found that the ossuary came from a
burial cave in the valley of Elah, near Beth Shemesh, southwest of Jerusalem. The High Priest Caiaphas is known from
the trial of Jesus, but it was not known that his family was associated with the priests of Maaziah, who formed one
of the 24 courses of priests that served their allotted two weeks in the First Temple, as mentioned in I Chron,
24:18. The name Beth-Imri can refer to a family of the Maaziah clan, or be the name of a village in the north
Hebron hills called today Beth-Ummar. The ossuary is in good condition, complete with lid and is decorated on the
face with two six-spoked rosettes, symbols of everlasting life.

Computer Program to Identify Authorship

Prof. Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University is an expert on authorship attribution and has perfected, with others, a
computer system of analysis called Authorship Attribution Algorithms (AAA), which is based on style and wording and is
used to analyze authorship of criminal and other suspicious documents. Prof. Koppel claims that the program can also
be used to identify authorship of biblical texts. Although much work on biblical analysis has been done by individual
scholars in the past, they are sometimes accused of personal bias, which, according to Koppel, cannot be leveled at
his computer program. The researchers have taken sections of the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and jumbled them up
together, then analyzed them by their AAA method, and the computer was able to accurately separate the two authors.
However further results have not yet been published but it seems that Koppel and his team have started work on the
several books of the Tanakh. We await results.

Golden Bell Found in Drainage Channel from Temple Mount

Much excitement has been generated by announcement of the finding of a small golden bell in the debris of the
drainage channel under the walkway that leads from the Temple Mount, in the area of Robinsons Arch, to the
Siloam pool. This stepped walkway has been excavated by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron over the last few years and it
is hoped to open it to the public shortly. In the past, discarded items of clothing and food vessels were found,
which indicated that the walkway had been used as an escape route during the Roman sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Now a
small golden bell, about the size of a shilling (5p.) piece has been recovered by Eli Shukron from between layers of
debris in the drainage channel below the walkway.

The bell is of pure gold and has a tiny ring at the top for attachment to a garment, and the assumption is that it
was one of the bells attached to the skirt of the garment of one of the priests, or even the High Priest himself, in
the late Second Temple period. Such an ornament is mentioned in the description of the High-Priestly garments for
the Tabernacle in Exod. 28: 33 & 34. However it is not clear that such an ornament was worn by anyone except the
High Priest and difficult to understand how such a garment came to be worn outside the area of the Temple itself,
unless, of course, we are talking of the time of tumult during the Roman destruction of the Temple and the city.

Ophel Archaeological Park, Jerusalem

After preliminary mention of the site in Report no.32, when it was inaugurated some weeks ago. it is now clear that
the park will not be open to the public for at least another month. The site incorporates lengthy walkways among the
Israelite and Byzantine walls linking the City of David area to the south of the Temple Mount, and the centerpiece
is an Iron Age gateway that the excavators suggest may be the Water Gate, mentioned in Nehemiah 3:26. It is
certainly an impressive structure and still stands 4m. high.

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Comments (2)

According to Nehemiah 12:37, the Water Gate lies east of the house of David. Nehemiah 3:27 mentions the Wall of Ophel followed by the Horse Gate in verse 28. The Ophel gate that was revealed by Mazar is the Horse Gate! The Water Gate is one gate to the south (east of David's Palace).

#1 - Bud Chrysler - 08/15/2011 - 23:24

I understand that not everyone agrees that this structure is a gate and that the dating is not certain.

#2 - Martin - 08/23/2011 - 21:39

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